The Right Side of History

by Ben Shapiro

  That’s where our task starts. But that’s not where it ends. As my daughter and son grow older, their questions will become harder. Good. That’s what reason is designed to do: to question. And it will be our job to try to find answers for them, and to assure them that though we may not have all the answers, with effort, they can find answers that uphold the traditions of our history while exploring new horizons. We will teach our children that they stand on powerful, vital foundations built by hands not their own, and that they are protected by walls they, too, must defend. We will teach them that they must learn why the walls exist before tearing them down. We will say to them, as G. K. Chesterton did, “If you don’t see the use of [that wall], I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”4 We will do our best to teach them what made our civilization great—and what makes our civilization great still. It is our job to reconnect with both the word of God and with the philosophy of reason and individual liberty—two ideas that are, after all, inextricably intertwined.

  I don’t tend to be much of an emotional creature. But having kids changes that. One evening recently, at bedtime, my daughter turned to me and asked, “Daddy, will you always be my daddy?”

  Surprised, I answered, “Of course, sweetheart.”

  “But,” she clarified, “one day I’ll be older. And really old people die. So will you still be there?”

  I felt a catch in my throat—because, naturally, she’s right. I don’t like to think about death with regard to my own parents, let alone with respect to my children. And while I’m a believer in the afterlife, there’s no real way to know. I don’t know what comes after this. Nobody does.

  I put my hand to her hair and stroked her head. “Yes, baby,” I answered. “Mommy and I will always be there. We’ll always be your mommy and daddy.”

  I turned out the light and left the room. Then I sat outside her door and thought about how much I loved her, and how one day she’d face all the tough questions we all face. And I thought about how I would answer those tough questions for myself: in the end, are we all orphans? Are we bound to lose all those we love, and live and die alone? Are we specks blinking in and out of existence, leaving no trace?

  I don’t think we are. I think that the history of Western civilization shows that our parents live on in us—that when we accept our past, when we learn the lessons they teach us, when we recognize their wisdom even as we develop our own, we become a link in the chain of history. Our parents never die so long as we keep the flame of their ideals alive, and pass that flame along to our children.

  After I knew my daughter was asleep, I sneaked back into her room and kissed her head again. She was asleep; I know she probably didn’t feel it. But maybe she did. And that maybe is all we can hope for, all we can strive for.

  It is our job to carry on the tradition. It is our job to push the task forward.

  If we do, then we will be truly deserving of God’s blessing, and fit to proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof. We will choose life, so that we and our children may live.

  Acknowledgments

  This book was the work of many years of thinking and just as many years of conversations about profound issues. All those conversations, discussions, and arguments have had an impact on my thinking—so I’d like to thank all my friends and opponents for helping me develop that thinking. As always, all faults or errors are mine and mine alone.

  Thank you to my best friend, Jeremy Boreing, an unsung hero of the conservative movement who has been my partner in business and in the political foxhole. I can think of no one with whom I’d rather go into ideological battle. It’s a privilege and a pleasure to do that every day.

  Thank you to Caleb Robinson, the CEO of Forward Publishing, who helps steer the course with dignity and pragmatism. It’s rare to find a man so dedicated to principle. I’m proud to be in business with him.

  Thank you to Eric Nelson, editor of this book, who had to slog his way through this material several times and who helped me bring the starry sky down to earth—at least, as far as I was able.

  Thank you to Frank Breeden, my agent, who understood that this was a passion project, and encouraged both the passion and the project.

  Thank you to all the respected colleagues and thinkers who read the manuscript for this book and helped me improve it every step of the way, including Yoram Hazony, Yuval Levin, Matthew Continetti, John Podhoretz, Andrew Klavan, the execrable Michael Knowles, Rabbi David Wolpe, Eric Weinstein, David French, Dana Perino, and my friend and Talmudic study partner Rabbi Moshe Samuels. Their generosity has been unending.

  Thank you to all the great folks I work with every day at Daily Wire, from our writers and editors to our producers. I simply couldn’t do what I do without their incredible support—and they certainly have my gratitude.

  Thank you to our broadcast partners at Westwood One, who have been groundbreaking in their approach to both the podcast and the radio show.

  Thank you to our partners at Young America’s Foundation, who help us bring our message to hundreds of thousands of young people on college campuses across America.

  Thank you to my syndicators at Creators Syndicate, the editors of National Review, and the editors of Newsweek, all of whom allow me to reach readers across the political and cultural spectrum.

  Most of all, thank you to all our listeners, watchers, readers, and social media followers: you inspire me to improve every day, and I hope to live up to your trust.

  Finally, thank you to God, Creator of the heavens and the earth, Master of meaning and purpose, and Benevolent Father of human freedom.

  Thank you.

  Notes

  INTRODUCTION

  1.“Achievements in Public Health, 1900–1999: Healthier Mothers and Babies,” CDC.gov, October 1, 1999, https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm4838a2.htm.

  2.“Exit polls,” CNN.com, November 23, 2016, http://www.cnn.com/election/results/exit-polls.

  3.Aaron Blake, “Nearly Half of Liberals Don’t Even Like to Be around Trump Supporters,” WashingtonPost.com, July 20, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/07/20/half-of-liberals-cant-even-stand-to-be-around-trump-supporters/?utm_term=.be6b213ac75c.

  4.Clare Malone, “Americans Don’t Trust Their Institutions Anymore,” FiveThirtyEight.com, November 16, 2016, https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/americans-dont-trust-their-institutions-anymore/.

  5.Jim Norman, “Americans’ Confidence in Institutions Stays Low,” Gallup.com, June 13, 2016, http://news.gallup.com/poll/192581/americans-confidence-institutions-stays-low.aspx.

  6.Jeffrey M. Jones, “In U.S., Confidence in Police Lowest in 22 Years,” Gallup.com, June 19, 2015, http://news.gallup.com/poll/183704/confidence-police-lowest-years.aspx?g_source=position2&g_medium=related&g_campaign=tiles.

  7.Norman, “Americans’ Confidence in Institutions Stays Low.”

  8.George Gao, “Americans Divided on How Much They Trust Their Neighbors,” Pew Research, April 13, 2016, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/04/13/americans-divided-on-how-much-they-trust-their-neighbors/.

  9.Nathaniel Persily and Jon Cohen, “Americans Are Losing Faith in Democracy—and in Each Other,” WashingtonPost.com, October 14, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/americans-are-losing-faith-in-democracy-and-in-each-other/2016/10/14/b35234ea-90c6-11e6-9c52-0b10449e33c4_story.html?utm_term=.4a67e7724901.

  10. Josh Zumbrun, “Not Just the 1%: The Upper Middle Class Is Larger and Richer Than Ever,” WSJ.com, June 21, 2016, https://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2016/06/21/not-just-the-1-the-upper-middle-class-is-larger-and-richer-than-ever/.

  11. “Mobility, Measured,” Economist.com, February 1, 2014, http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21595437-america-no-less-socially-mobile-it-was-generation-ago-mobility-measured.

  12. Ta-Nehisi Coates, “The Champion Barack Obama,” TheAtlantic.
com, January 31, 2014, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/01/the-champion-barack-obama/283458/.

  13. Ta-Nehisi Coates, “The First White President,” Atlantic, October 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/10/the-first-white-president-ta-nehisi-coates/537909/.

  14. Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me (New York: Spiegel and Grau ,2015), 111.

  15. Thomas Chatterton Williams, “How Ta-Nehisi Coates Gives Whiteness Power,” New York Times, October 6, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/06/opinion/ta-nehisi-coates-whiteness-power.html?smid=tw-share&_r=1&mtrref=www.nationalreview.com&assetType=opinion.

  16. Frank Newport, “In US, 87% Approve of Black-White Intermarriage, vs. 4% in 1958,” Gallup.com, July 25, 2013, http://news.gallup.com/poll/163697/approve-marriage-blacks-whites.aspx.

  17. “Race Relations,” Gallup.com, http://news.gallup.com/poll/1687/race-relations.aspx.

  18. Mostafa El-Bermawy, “Your Filter Bubble Is Destroying Democracy,” Wired.com, November 18, 2016, https://www.wired.com/2016/11/filter-bubble-destroying-democracy/.

  19. Levi Boxell, Matthew Gentzkow, and Jesse M. Shapiro, “Is the Internet Causing Political Polarization? Evidence from Demographics,” Brown.edu, March 2017, https://www.brown.edu/Research/Shapiro/pdfs/age-polars.pdf.

  20. Jonah Engel Bromwich, “Social Media Is Not Contributing Significantly to Political Polarization, Paper Says,” NYTimes.com, April 13, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/13/us/political-polarization-internet.html?mtrref=www.google.com.

  21. Jonah Goldberg, The Suicide of the West (New York: Crown Forum, 2018), 8.

  22. Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress (New York: Penguin Random House, 2018).

  23. ADL’s Task Force on Harassment and Journalism, Anti-Semitic Targeting of Journalists during the 2016 Presidential Campaign, ADL.org, October 19, 2016, https://www.adl.org/sites/default/files/documents/assets/pdf/press-center/CR_4862_Journalism-Task-Force_v2.pdf.

  CHAPTER 1: THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS

  1.William Kristol, “It’s All about Him,” New York Times, February 25, 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/25/opinion/25kristol.html.

  2.Eli Stokols, “Unapologetic, Trump Promises to Make America Rich,” Politico.com, May 26, 2016, http://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/unapologetic-trump-promises-to-make-america-rich-223632.

  3.Dana Milbank, “Americans’ Optimism Is Dying,” Washington Post, August 12, 2014, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dana-milbank-americans-optimism-is-dying/2014/08/12/f81808d8-224c-11e4-8593-da634b334390_story.html?utm_term=.5f205324fd19.

  4.Shira Schoenberg, “Poll: Young Americans Fearful about Future of America, Overwhelmingly Support Hillary Clinton,” MassLive.com, October 26, 2016, http://www.masslive.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/10/young_americans_fearful_about.html.

  5.“US Suicide Rate Surges, Particularly among White People,” BBC.com, April 22, 2016, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-36116166.

  6.Ecclesiastes 2:1 (Torah Mitzion).

  7.Deuteronomy 28:47–48 (NIV).

  8.Ecclesiastes 3:22 (NIV).

  9.Ethics of the Fathers 2:15.

  10. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1101a.

  11. George Washington, Letter to the Protestant Episcopal Church, August 19, 1789, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-03-02-0289.

  12. Charles Krauthammer, “A Note to Readers,” Washington Post, June 8, 2018.

  13. Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning (Boston: Beacon Press, 2017), 80 (emphasis mine).

  14. Steve Taylor, PhD, “A Sense of Purpose Means a Longer Life,” PsychologyToday.com, November 12, 2014, https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/out-the-darkness/201411/sense-purpose-means-longer-life.

  15. Dhruv Khullar, MD, “Finding Purpose for a Good Life. But Also a Healthy One,” New York Times, January 1, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/01/upshot/finding-purpose-for-a-good-life-but-also-a-healthy-one.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur.

  16. Psalms 8:5 (NIV).

  17. “George Washington’s Rules of Civility,” NPR.org, May 11, 2003, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1248919.

  18. Brett and Kate McKay, “The Virtuous Life: Wrap Up,” ArtOfManliness.com, June 1, 2008, http://www.artofmanliness.com/2008/06/01/the-virtuous-life-wrap-up/.

  19. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning, 69.

  20. Seneca’s Letters, Book II, Letter XLVIII.

  21. Ecclesiastes 4:9–10.

  22. Jonathan Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom (New York: Basic Books, 2006), 133.

  23. Liz Mineo, “Good Genes Are Nice, but Joy Is Better,” Harvard Gazette, April 11, 2017, https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2017/04/over-nearly-80-years-harvard-study-has-been-showing-how-to-live-a-healthy-and-happy-life/.

  24. “Political Scientist: Does Diversity Really Work?,” NPR.org, August 15, 2007, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12802663.

  25. From John Adams to Massachusetts Militia, October 11, 1798, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-3102.

  CHAPTER 2: FROM THE MOUNTAINTOP

  1.H. W. F. Saggs, Civilization before Greece and Rome (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989), 268.

  2.Jordan B. Peterson, Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief (New York: Routledge, 1999).

  3.Jonathan Sacks, “The Wilderness and the Word,” RabbiSacks.org, May 31, 2008, http://rabbisacks.org/covenant-conversation-5768-bemidbar-the-wilderness-and-the-word-2/.

  4.Tammi J. Schneider, An Introduction to Ancient Mesopotamian Religion (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2011), 103.

  5.Exodus 20:2–3 (NIV).

  6.Exodus 33:19–20 (NIV).

  7.Deuteronomy 32:4 (NIV).

  8.Talmud Bavli, Bava Metzia 59b.

  9.Deuteronomy 12:2–3.

  10. Saggs, Civilization before Greece and Rome, 268.

  11. Leviticus 11:45.

  12. Talmud Bavli, Eruvin 100b.

  13. Gerald A. Press, The Development of the Idea of History in Antiquity (Kingston, ON: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1982), 7.

  14. Albert Kirk Grayson, Babylonian Historical-Literary Texts (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 1975).

  15. Arnold Krupat, Ethnocriticism: Ethnography, History, Literature (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 38.

  16. Masao Abe, Buddhism and Interfaith Dialogue (Houndmills, Basingstoke, England: Macmillan, 1995), 60.

  17. Genesis 9:13–15.

  18. Deuteronomy 4:34 (NIV).

  19. Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews (New York: Harper & Row, 1987), 2.

  20. Virginia Schomp, The Ancient Egyptians (New York: Marshall Cavendish, 2008), 41.

  21. “Religion and Power: Divine Kingship in the Ancient World and Beyond,” Uchicago.edu, February 23–24, 2007, https://oi.uchicago.edu/research/symposia/religion-and-power-divine-kingship-ancient-world-and-beyond-0.

  22. “The Code of Hammurabi,” http://avalon.law.yale.edu/ancient/hamframe.asp.

  23. Genesis 6:2–3.

  24. Genesis 4:6–7.

  25. Deuteronomy 30:15–20 (NIV).

  26. Exodus 24:7.

  27. Ecclesiastes 12:13

  28. Ecclesiastes 3:12, 22

  29. Exodus 32:12–13.

  30. Genesis 12:3.

  31. Richard Tarnas, The Passion of the Western Mind (New York: Ballantine Books, 1991), 99.

  32. Matt Lewis, “Obama Loves Martin Luther King’s Great Quote—But He Uses It Incorrectly,” TheDailyBeast.com, January 16, 2017, https://www.thedailybeast.com/obama-loves-martin-luther-kings-great-quotebut-he-uses-it-incorrectly.

  33. Deuteronomy 17:14–20.

  34. Judges 8:23.

  35. 1 Samuel 8:10–18.

  CHAPTER 3: FROM THE DUST

  1.Daniel Walker Howe, “Classical Education in America,” Wilson Quarterly, Spring 2011, https://wilsonquarterly.com/quarterly/spring-2011-the-city-bounces
-back-four-portraits/classical-education-in-america/.

  2.Ashley Thorne, “The Drive to Put Western Civ Back in the College Curriculum,” New York Post, March 29, 2016, https://nypost.com/2016/03/29/the-drive-to-put-western-civ-back-in-the-college-curriculum/.

  3.Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979).

  4.Charlotte Allen, “Confucius and the Scholars,” TheAtlantic.com, April 1999, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1999/04/confucius-and-the-scholars/377530/.

  5.Chris Bodenner, “The Surprising Revolt at the Most Liberal College in the Country,” TheAtlantic.com, November 2, 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/11/the-surprising-revolt-at-reed/544682/.

  6.Walter Kerr, Tragedy and Comedy (New York: Da Capo Press, 1985), 146.

  7.Plato, The Republic (New York: Basic Books, 1968), 514a–520a.

  8.W. K. C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), 415.

  9.Plato, The Republic, 353c–353e.

  10. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, 415.

  11. Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 1098a.

  12. Jonathan Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom (New York: Basic Books, 2006), 163–65.

  13. Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), 162.

  14. Richard Tarnas, The Passion of the Western Mind (New York: Ballantine Books, 1991), 47.

  15. Ibid., 46.

  16. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), 135.